1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to copyright infringement by peer-to-peer file sharing, and more specifically, to terminating copyright infringement by users of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol.
2. Description of the Related Art
The broad accessibility of broadband internet service has allowed users to quickly and often illegally download media files such as music, movies, and games.
The most widespread method of transferring media files on the Internet is the client-server model. A central server sends the entire file to each client that requests it. The clients only communicate with the server, and never to each other. The main advantage of this method is that it is simple to set up. However, this method can be problematic with files that are large or very popular. It requires a great deal of bandwidth and server resources to distribute such a file, since the server must transmit the entire file to each client. Mirrors partially address this shortcoming by distributing the load across multiple servers, but at a significant expense.
Another popular method of transferring media uses a peer-to-peer network. BitTorrent is the most popular protocol for transferring large files over peer-to-peer networks and have accounted for a large percentage of total internet traffic. BitTorrent works by separating a file to be transferred into many small pieces to be distributed amongst multiple computers. A computer may receive one piece of the file from one particular computer, while simultaneously getting another piece of the file from a different computer. Any computer has the ability to upload already downloaded pieces of the file to any other computer that lacks that piece of the file.
The act of file sharing itself is not illegal and peer-to-peer networks are also used for legitimate purposes. However peer-to-peer file sharing also provides a powerful tool for violating copyright laws by allowing users to share and distribute copyrighted works without permission.
There is a current need for an efficient means of tracking and stopping copyright infringement by BitTorrent users.